Bryan Fuller opens up on Hannibal's axing and plans for a season 4

The talent behind TV's most innovative drama on its impact and uncertain future.

Bryan Fuller knew going into the third season of Hannibal that it would be the show's last - at least on its original home of NBC.

This foreknowledge shaped how Fuller - showrunner on the gorgeous, grotesque drama - crafted the 13 episodes, flipping the chronology of the original Thomas Harris novels to adapt first 1999's Hannibal and then 1981's Red Dragon.

Brooke Palmer

"I was aware this was going to be our last season," he told assembled press at Comic-Con 2015. "So I kind of wanted to get as much in there as possible."

The first, recently concluded, mini-arc of seven episodes this year formed a loose adaptation of Hannibal the book, with Red Dragon serving as the inspiration for the upcoming final six.

"I felt like if we were to sustain the Italian chapter for an entire season, there would be episodes that might tread a little water," he explained. "But it was also an awareness of the scythe over our heads - I knew if we didn't do Red Dragon now, we might not be able to."

The death knell tolled for Hannibal once it dropped below a 0.5 rating in the all-important 18-49 demographic - a cut-off point established in what Fuller calls a "gentlemen's agreement" with Jennifer Salke, NBC's entertainment president.

"NBC has been so fantastic and supportive of us, in allowing us to tell a story that no other network would allow us to do," he insisted. "But once we went below a 0.5, I knew Jen wouldn't be able to protect us from the schedulers at NBC. Nobody's going to buy advertising at top dollar rates for a 0.5 rating."

If the worst comes to pass and Hannibal does end for good on August 29, then Hugh Dancy - the troubled Will Graham - believes that the last episode filmed could serve as a satisfying de-facto series finale.

"Every season that we've shot so far has concluded in a way where there was always a sword of Damocles hanging over us," he noted. "If it had to [serve as a series finale], it could. it would be satisfying - [but] it could also serve as a good jumping-off point for another season."

A potential fourth season of Hannibal would, Fuller revealed, reinvent the dynamic between Will and Hannibal (Mads Mikkelsen) "in a huge way" - he bills it as a reinvention of the entire series.

Brooke Palmer

"Bryan described how a prospective fourth season might play out - or feature film, whatever it might be at this stage - and it was such a different place for them to go," Dancy said. "I thought it sounded fascinating - an amazing inversion and almost a return to the first season, but a new kind of storytelling."

Fuller also once again voiced his desire to bring a version of Harris's second Lecter novel, 1988's Silence of the Lambs, to the screen - a desire that has so far been frustrated by MGM, who hold the rights to the book.

"Martha [De Laurentiis, executive producer] has the rights to every character who originated in Red Dragon, so they track through all the books, but she doesn't have the rights to whoever originated in Silence of the Lambs," he explained.

"So no Buffalo Bill, no Clarice Starling, no Barney, no Ardelia Mapp - those characters, which are all very fantastic, we don't have rights to.

"We tried - every year we'd go back to MGM. At first, it was a hard 'No', then it was 'Ask us later' and then it was 'Ask us again next year' - it would be fantastic [if they agreed]."

Billy Farrell Agency

Fuller even has an Oscar-nominated actress in mind to play FBI rookie Clarice: "I love Ellen Page," he revealed. "I think she would be a great Clarice - but I also love the idea of casting somebody who's not white in that role.

"Having race play a factor in Clarice's background, in a way that race plays a factor in everybody's background, I think that would be an interesting exploration of the character."

There's no time limit on a potential Hannibal resurrection - and Fuller insists he "would find a way" to work his commitment to any new season or movie around his duties on forthcoming Starz series American Gods.

"It's meant an enormous amount to me - on every level. It's been challenging, and an incredible collaboration, because of Bryan's generosity in that respect - and Mads, who I love, is a wonderful actor and an incredible partner in that respect.

"It feels very bittersweet - we don't know what the future of the show is, or if there is a future for the show, but I don't expect to have an experience of this nature for a long time, if ever again. That's no bad thing, it's just because it's been so profound."

If that is to be Hannibal's epitaph, it's certainly not a bad one.

Hannibal is now airing on Saturday nights on NBC, and continues on Wednesdays on Sky Living in the UK.

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